


Ad Astra...

by JeanGulberg



Category: Sunless Skies
Genre: Narrow Canon Divergence, Original Character(s), Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29219433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGulberg/pseuds/JeanGulberg
Summary: A girl's encounter with a mysterious skyfarer leads her to uncover a secret about her origins. The Venturous Heiress is ready to abandon her life of comfort in Port Prosper's cushy West End and travel across the High Wilderness in search of answers. Who was her mother? What became of her? And what role does she play in Queen Victoria's schemes?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

The Parsimonious Chairman was sipping tea in his office, watching the locomotives flying outside.

His office was located on the upper floor of an elegant townhouse and the large, circular window at the back offered him a wonderful view over the rooves and smoking chimneys of Port Prosper. Further out, the rooves became sparser and further apart, making way for the green vastness of the Reach. The Chairman very much enjoyed beginning his mornings with this sight.

He glanced at the old grandfather clock in the corner, a gift from the Horological Office on behalf of Her Majesty. There was still half an hour left before he had to begin work with the public. A waiting line had probably already formed on the lower floors, made up of people from all social ranks, from proper aristocrats to merchants and skyfarers, all hoping that the Chairman could listen to their complaints and, hopefully, act to fix them. This draining work lasted until noon, when the employees’ lunch break came. Not that this was a concern for the Chairman, as he needed only ring a bell and a servant would be immediately sent up. In fact, it was now already a habit to ask for drinks to be brought up whenever he had to discuss some lengthy affair with someone from high society. The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to tasks that generally came down to filing paperwork, but there were lower functionaries paid to do that. The Chairman would sometimes be visited by higher-ups from the Windward Company at this time of day, to discuss matters of business, future prospects and recently discovered hour seams, or, if the day was a wretched one, by someone from the Ministries. Their people had the amazing ability of popping up only at the worst possible times.

Once that was done, the Chairman liked having the rest of his afternoons off. He enjoyed taking long walks through his city, going about the twisting streets at a firm and steady pace - unless he had to hide from some society matron, ready to break open a business subject if he dared to engage her in conversation. But that was a privilege earned, he thought, just like the fine mahogany table in his offices, the great rotund window or the bell that alerted the servants. One of those things reserved only for the great, and the Parsimonious Chairman liked to think of himself as one. That’s what life is all about, after all.

And he had earned it all fair, didn’t he? For a moment, he turned to look at the black and white photos framed on the walls. All throughout his life, no matter what he was doing, he had always put in the effort to climb up a peg, until he reached the top. Whether it was boxing, back in his youth (he still cherished the photo taken in the ring of himself, black eyed, next to the former champion, the Bishop of Southwark), or, nowadays, the work in service of the British Empire and the Windward Company. He remembered all of it clearly. Back in old London, he was just a minor government clerk, doing painstaking work day after day. But then… Then Her Majesty had opened the doors to the heavens to build a new empire, and he followed Her. He had been there when New London had been built, when the Throne of Hours rose to the sky and the Clockwork Sun began shining in the firmament of distant Albion. He had been there when the first locomotives had taken off, and when the Transit Relays first became functional, allowing travel between distant corners of the skies. When the Windward Company was formed by the Crown and given the exclusive right to explore and exploit the Reach, he was firm in his decision to join them, still as a mere clerk. That’s what had brought him where he was now, that first opportunity of which he took advantage. One had to be cunning to navigate the subtle power games played both between the Company and other institutions, and within the Windward Company itself. But the Parsimonious Chairman also liked to think of himself as incredibly cunning. He quickly learnt that there is little difference between the squabbles of street gangs and the intrigues of politicians. He was prepared to do whatever it was necessary in order to come out on top, and, in his eyes, that was sufficiently fair.

The view outside the window was the reward for all that work. Not the view itself, though it was beautiful enough in its own right, but the fact that _he_ was the one to see it, from his desk, while drinking the finest tea on the market, unperturbed. This was all _his_ ! The Company, Port Prosper, the Reach, everything! Sure, there were some higher-ups back in Albion, such as the Company’s board of directors, but Albion was blessedly far away, far-flung on the other side of the High Wilderness. The only way to travel between there and the Reach was through the transit relay situated on the edge of town and permanently monitored by the Ministry of Public Decency. In practice, those cushioned bureaucrats knew nothing of the life out here. They were just names on a plaque in the Reach; the Chairman was not. He was respected, feared, assaulted day and night by petitions and solicitors, but even that was worth it if it served to certify his power. Most of all, he was important and the people waiting outside to speak to him were the clearest indicator of that. Whatever it was that people needed, they came to _him_ to ask for it, and he was more than willing to be the object of their attention.

Yes, all this was rightfully his, and nothing could threaten his position now! Well, almost. There were two threats, in particular.

The Chairman glanced again at the clock, then put down his now empty cup. There was still a little bit of time left before work began. He sighed, and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

First, there were the Tacketies, those god-forsaken rebels who wanted to break free from the Empire. They had first come to the Reach as settlers, miners or farmers, in an attempt made by the Queen to populate this new expanse of space. Their name came from the short nails that kept together the hardened boots these men would wear on such jobs. But among them there were also criminals and fugitives who desperately wanted to get as far away from the Empire in order to conduct their clandestine and immoral affairs. Once they saw themselves on the other side of the transit relay, far, far from the eyes of Her Majesty and the blessed light of the Clockwork Sun, these scoundrels started spreading dissent and seditionary lies. And those spread wide among the other colonists, travelling to distant corners of the new-found wilderness, where the Ministry of Public Decency had not yet established its agents. The worst of the lot were now gathered at the city of New Winchester, the so-called ‘Colonial Assembly’, and demanded the worst of all possible evils – independence! 

They thought perhaps that the British Empire’s hands could not grasp them there, but they were wrong, the Chairman knew. Soon enough, their silly rebellion would be quenched for good. And this was the second threat.

Earlier, the Chairman had been sifting through the letters from London addressed to the Windward Company. Every morning, a postal engine came through the relay outside of town, bringing correspondence from Albion, and went back loaded with letters from the Reach. The Chairman was quick to discard the unsolicited offers, and threw those related to business at the bottom of a drawer, among others of the same kind. But the one that drew his attention was different. It was a creamy envelope with a red wax sigil, and a Royal Seal imprinted on it (a Crown above a Clock, with ‘God Save the Queen’ inscribed around them.) This meant it was royal correspondence, containing sensitive information related to the workings of the government, the only kind of letter that the Ministry’s censors were not allowed to open and read.

The wax sigil had been broken by the Chairman, and the contents of the envelope were clear and concise:  
  


_TO: Chairman of Wind. Co., Port Prosper_

_We inform you that the Subsecretary of the Company is to arrive in the Reach in two days from now, together with a division of new forces. They have been tasked by the Crown with putting a stop to the rebellion of the Tacketies, as the current situation greatly displeases Her Renewed Majesty. You are to assist them in all manners possible, until further notice._

_Hail Britannia!_

_London headquarters_  
  


Even the novice clerks of the Company knew and feared the Prudent Secretary. Whispers about them were shared during breaks, and tales of their ruthlessness were exchanged by functionaries when no one else was around. Even the Company directors thought twice before questioning the Secretary’s decisions, as outlandish as they seemed at times. The Secretary was always right and, what’s more, the Secretary never made any mistakes. At least that’s what the rumours said, for most functionaries outside of London had never met the Secretary face to face, and, truth be told, they were not eager to have such an experience.

And now they were coming here, the Chairman thought, and they were not coming alone either. ‘Division of new forces’, that was the code for dreadnaughts. They’d bring their new, shiny London ships to the Reach to fight the Tacketies. London ships commandeered by London officers, who were loyal to the Secretary, and the Secretary only. This would not do. The Chairman stood up to look in the mirror, desperately trying to control the colour of his face, which was now shifting to an intense shade of crimson. He loosened his collar and took out the handkerchief again. This was his domain, and they dared come here! The Windward Company wanted the Secretary to be in charge of Port Prosper. They were only meant to be here until the Tacketies were dealt with, but what if they stayed around afterwards? What if the Company decided that the Reach was not properly managed, and they left them here to take over all the operations? The Secretary would become the hero of the Company, and he? He would be remembered as the incompetent Chairman who needed the help of London to squander a few rebels. They might even demote him…

The grandfather clock started chiming, a sign that the work day was to begin. The Chairman tied back his shirt and managed to regain a more towardly posture. He hurried back to the desk and put the letter away – he would have to inform the rest of the personnel eventually, but not yet. The power games of the Reach would soon suffer a dramatic change, and his own career was at stake. Something needed to be done, he decided that instant.

A knock was heard at the door, and the Chairman turned around with feigned disinterest. “Come in!”


	2. Chapter 2

The hooded figure was making her way through the busy streets, trying her best to blend into the crowd. That was no easy task in a place like Port Prosper, where someone’s clothing conveyed almost everything about that person. Looking inconspicuous was a challenge, and her current garments – a strange mix between a light petticoat and a soft, but unostentatious brown cloak – were testament to that.

Port Prosper was a small London away from London, a city built, approximately, in the image of the Empire’s capital. Just like the original, it was divided between an affluent West End and an impoverished East End, the two sides being strictly delimited, at the insistences of the West Enders, of course. Social mixing was greatly frowned upon, save for when it was absolutely necessary, and looking like the wrong sort in the wrong part of town could get you into enough trouble. If you were walking through the West End, but looked like you just finished work cleaning a factory chimney, you would be met with scoffs and frowns from gentlemen and ladies, and perhaps a few questions from a Constable tasked with keeping the public decency; if you dared go into the East End with jewel necklaces or earrings in sight, you better prayed you would leave with them still attached. While the East Enders were happy to have their one good suit for the Sundays, when they went to listen to the New Sequence’s sermons in Church, the fashions of the West End were dictated entirely by the Royal Sartorial Committee. All of Her Majesty’s subjects were expected to foster an image of ‘authentic Britishness’, though the task of defining what that meant, exactly, was left to an entire army of elderly philosophers, deep within the halls of the Ministry of Public Decency. For example, no respectable gentleman would go out in public without a tailor-made stovepipe hat, which, as the Sartorial Committee had decreed, was the ‘adequate representation of patriotic sentiment in both formal and informal settings.’

The only exception to these rules were the skyfarers, whose leather boots and fur coats were immediately recognisable, much like their uncouth demeanour, and whom the West Enders begrudgingly accepted, in spite of their sensibilities.

Skyfarers! The Venturous Heiress’ thoughts could not help but drift towards them. This was the whole point of her little unsanctioned escapade. She wanted to, if not talk to real skyfarers, then at least listen to the tales they had of the skies – tales of incredible exploits, of the dangers of the heavens, of unseen wonders and of great perils evaded at the very last moment. Were all of them true? Maybe, maybe not, but they were certainly more interesting than what those bores in high society had to say, or the Ministry-approved literature that was available. There was something real, palpable in the lives of these men and women, there was thrill and adventure, and, most of all, there was variety! Something other than well-lit salons and piano lessons. Something authentic. Too bad most of them preferred to stay in the East End on the rare occasions when they came to town. The dislike between the West End and the skyfarers was mutual.

But something interrupted the Heiress’ train of thought, and she quickly abandoned the main avenue, dashing into a side-alley and climbing up a flight of stairs (like most cities in the High Wilderness, Port Prosper had been built vertically as well as horizontally, and most streets were connected by a variety of bridges or staircases, for pedestrians.) She looked onto the street below and saw the man with a top hat walking in the same direction she had come from. That was Mr Be…-something, she had never bothered to learn the names of aristocrats, but she recognised him as a family friend of her aunt! She couldn’t risk being recognised, especially not here, this close to the bridge that separated the two sides of the city. She had told her aunt that she was going to meet some friends in Regent’s Park, on the very opposite side of town. She had to lie, of course. Her aunt and uncle wouldn’t even allow her to leave the house alone, nevermind going to the East End. And the Heiress could not stand them for that, among other things. They were always so strict and rigorous and… proper. Everything had to be exact with them, spot on, no room allowed for mistakes or for some harmless fun. Theirs was a life of fine porcelain cups, pampered crinolines and suffocating attention to detail. She knew she did not fit into that worldview: she was not posh, she was not elegant, and, most of all, she was not ‘proper.’ 

The Heiress remembered someone saying that there were a thousand ways to die in the skies. On her seventeenth birthday, she decided that she ought to start living first. Thus had begun her secretive ventures into the unseen lives of skyfarers. That was, she realised, what they had and she did not – freedom.

Mr B___ went further on his way, and the Heiress went on hers. She turned back for a second and looked at the hands of the Albert Clock, named so in loving memory of the beloved Prince Consort, who had tragically passed away shortly after Her Majesty opened the way to the Skies. The original architects meant it to be a replica of the Great Bell from old London, but after the Queen ‘exiled’ the original to the edge of Albion, along with the rest of the Parliament’s Palace (and Parliament itself, for that matter), the status of the clock in Port Prosper had become dubious in the eyes of the Ministry, giving no short of troubles to the governing authorities. The idea to turn it into a monument dedicated to the Consort was the only thing that saved them from being accused of harbouring unpatriotic sentiments and being sent to the workworlds. 

All that was of no importance to the Heiress, however, and she moved along towards the Mornington-Abrathat Span, the great bridge that separated the West from the East, the rich from the poor, the drones from the honey-bees. There was only a slight inconvenience: at the edge of the bridge, two soldiers in navy-blue uniforms stood guard. But this was not the first time the Heiress had come here; she knew what to say.

“Halt!” one of them said as she approached. “Name and purpose, miss.”

“I’m just going to Queen’s Cross Station,” she replied. “Papa is arriving today from London and I can’t wait to meet him!”

Queen’s Cross Station was in a strange position. It was the only stop for all the locomotives whose captains had business in Port Prosper. That meant business both in the East and the West End, and the two sides could not agree where it should be built. The West Enders surely did not want to go into the East End in order to catch their trains, but neither did they want the clatter and noise of the railway on their side of town. The Station now lied awkwardly in no-man’s-land, on the very precipice of the East End, as if it were always ready to tumble into the abyss below.

“Alone, miss? Has your family not come with you?”

“My uncle is very busy at work at this time of day, sir. But he allowed me to come here to see the train arriving. Papa does some very important work in London, with politics, I think, and I sparsely get to see him nowadays.”

This was a blatant lie. Her uncle knew nothing of her whereabouts, as for her father…

“I don’t know what to say, miss,” the soldier replied, taking off his hat and scratching behind his ears. The blue felt uniform was clearly uncomfortable and itchy. Her lie about her father would have been enough for most soldiers, but this one must have been a novice. “We have strict orders, and…”

“Please,” she tried, taking off her hood to reveal a pair of innocent, begging eyes. “I’ll only be there for a little while and, after all, Papa will be with me on the way back. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see me, he’s so busy all the time! Please, sir!”

“I- I don’t know, miss.” The soldier was certainly unaccustomed to situations like this one, turning for help toward the other guard, visibly more experienced.

“Ah, let her go, mate,” the other one intervened, “She seems to be a well-behaved young lady. I’m sure she can find her way to the platform without getting into trouble, isn’t that so, miss?”

The Heiress was ready to say “I can take care of myself very well, thank you!”, but she knew she had to play clueless if she wanted to get past these two. Instead, she just smiled and nodded.

“Besides,” said the man, speaking to his colleague again, “you know who’s coming today.”

“But… You don’t mean - ? Theirs?”

Who was coming? What were they talking about? Nevermind, if it was to her advantage, she could pretend to be anyone’s daughter.

“No, no, no, of course not. But perhaps… someone in their entourage? And there’s the festivities, too.”

“Yes, but…” The younger man paused for a moment, then turned to the Heiress. “What’s the name of your father, miss?”

D__n it! She needed to come up with something, quick.

“Mr… Beauford,” she blurted out.

“Beauford? Beauford, Beauford. Is there a Beauford on the list for the event?”

Good grief, were they really going to check?

“Come, now!” the other guard said. “Let her pass, mate, she looks like a good child.”

“Yes, sir. Indeed, sir,” she quickly added, trying to hide how much she hated being called that. She was just one year away from being an adult!

“Alright, alright, if you say so. I just don’t want to get in trouble, that’s all,” the first man added in a hushed voice. “You can go, miss.”

She nodded and strode past them, smiling. She wasn’t actually going to Queen’s Cross Station, though she also didn’t plan to travel too far away from the Span. After the next train arrived, she could just mingle with the passengers going West to cross the bridge back to the other side. Even though it was not her destination, she couldn’t help but look down at the Station – a marvellous building of glass and steel, surrounded by locomotive platforms. She could almost hear the clanking of steel on steel, the whistling of brass valves letting out steam, the screeching of heavy wheels being put into motion, and… song? She looked towards the main platform, and saw a small crowd of fancy dressed people and – yes! – there was a marching band, too, clumsily practicing some patriotic tunes. The soldiers were right – someone important was about to arrive, from the looks of it. But who? 

The Heiress remembered the portrait of Her Renewed Majesty hanging on a wall in the living room, at home, just like in every other household in the Empire. But she immediately dismissed the idea as absurd – everyone knew Her Majesty never left the Throne of Hours in London. And after all, why would she? When you’re Queen, the people are expected to come to you, not the opposite. Still, the Heiress had always wondered what Her Majesty looked like in real life, and she was not the only one – for the better part of half a century, when London still resided in that dark cavern below the earth, the Queen had been ‘indisposed’ and hadn’t left the interior of Kensington Palace once, not to mention the prohibition placed on using her real name in public (this custom persisted after the Gate to the heavens was opened, even though the powers that had previously imposed it – the Masters and the Bazaar – were no longer around.) All this had happened long before the Heiress’ time, and to her, ‘the Queen’ was just a title referring to an unseen sovereign, same as it was for most of those living in the Empire.

She stepped off the bridge and looked around at the gloomy streets of the East End. “I can take care of myself, alright!”, the Heiress muttered to herself, though her right hand automatically clenched around her necklace. She had almost forgotten about that! She quickly hid it beneath her collar and pulled the hood back over her head. The golden necklace might have tempted some of the folks around these parts, but she would not, under any circumstances, take it off. It was the only thing she had left from her mother, and she sternly refused to put it away. It was not pretty or stylish, but that didn’t matter at all to the Heiress. Her aunt had tried countless times to make her part with it, especially when they had to attend some aristocrat’s boring party, but she eventually gave up on the idea. “I’ve never met someone more stubborn!” she told the girl once, and the Heiress agreed, although she preferred to think of herself more as ‘persistent in her own ambitions’.

She took a sharp breath, inadvertently inhaling the thick smog that permeated the air of the East End, and started walking again. Suddenly, she felt her heart beating faster and, for some reason, her feet started moving at an accelerated pace. What was going on? She usually felt like this only when she was afraid, but then why was she secretly smiling? 

No, she decided, this feeling was not fear – it was excitement!


	3. Chapter 3

Given the number of locomotives one sees flying across the sky every day, leaving trails of their engine exhaust to condense on cold glass surfaces to the dismay of many window-cleaners, one might come to believe that every city in the High Wilderness is teeming with skyfarers, like a termite nest. This could not be further from the truth, for it is notoriously difficult to spot them in an urban environment, even on particularly warm and bright days, on streets that are usually not that busy. Of course, one might see bits and pieces here and there: a top hat, a battered overcoat, a pair of hard boots walking into a backalley, but rarely the ‘full article’.

Most skyfarers prefer to remain close to their locomotives, and there is good reason for that – the locomotives are their hearths and homes, quite literally, seeing how most captains would choose the comfort of a bunk bed over that of a luxurious hotel room any time. In the cold, open space, skyfarers quickly learn that the engine equals safety (and the ones that don’t are rarely mentioned, usually in obituaries.) Therefore, a step away from the engine is a step into where danger can reach you, and so, even when they are with both feet firmly anchored in solid ground, most skyfarers dare not venture too far from their steam-powered flying machines. Crew members might come and go, given that they are, for most purposes, an expendable quantity, but the bond between captain and engine, once forged, becomes unbreakable.

And yet, there is something stronger than even such a bond, something that can tempt even the most hardened of skyfarers to come out from their hiding places, something that touches the heart and captures the imagination – stories! Any skyfarer worth their salt is more than capable of going up before an audience and spinning a thrilling yarn about their own exploits – the details of which are more or less true to reality. Because of this inclination, skyfarers have come to trade their own tales with landlubbers, as well as other skyfarers, in exchange for money or even more unbelievable stories. The Venturous Heiress was heading towards a place where such trades often took place. It was a small tavern snuggled behind some abandoned warehouses, in one of the more industrialised parts of the East End. “The Bald Rat”, it was called, and the sign above the door depicted indeed a Rattus Faber in overalls with a patch of fur missing at the very top of its head. The Heiress gazed up at the poorly drawn sign and took a deep breath. She had been in places like this before and knew what to expect from the inside, but a knot always seemed to form in her throat just when she was about to enter the door. She looked sideways, making sure that no one was around, checked again that her necklace and pocket watch were safely hidden away and, at last, decided to walk in.

The interior matched her predictions. The floor had turned black from grime and cigar smoke, the cracks in the plaster were covered by discoloured posters advertising various locomotive models, while a pronounced smell of tobacco and cheap beer filled the air. There was a fireplace to one side and, naturally, a portrait of the Empress hung above it, though the conditions of its keeping had degraded the varnish, making it turn a yellowish-brown colour and causing surface cracks to appear over Queen Victoria’s otherwise serene face. The Heiress could not help but notice how different this place was from the typical West End restaurant, like The Admiral Nelson, where the menus had gold filigrees on the margins and they gave you three sets of cutleries when all you had ordered was a boiled egg. Quietly, she made her way closer to the nearest wall, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible, though that wasn’t too difficult a task, since most of the clients had given their full attention to the bearded man in front of the bar.

“Come on, Salty Pete, give us one more!”, a man from a nearby table exclaimed.

“Yes!” shouted a woman from the other side of the room, “You haven’t got tired already, you old dog?”

“Lads, lads, I’d be happy to oblige you,” answered Salty Pete from his post, lazily smoking his pipe, “but me throat is getting terribly sore by now. How I wish something could be done about that…” Just as the man spoke, a couple of Sovereigns – more than enough to buy a pint of beer in this place – landed at his feet, near an already existing pile. The storyteller was evidently eager to begin his next tale, but this custom of impersonal haggling and bargaining through the throwing of coins was very much enjoyed by the audience. It didn’t really matter who was paying, because, by the end, the cost would end up being split more or less evenly among all the patrons. As long as _someone_ paid, everyone got to listen to the story, and this arrangement was much to the Heiress’ liking. She knew better than to walk into the East End, pockets brimming with coins.

Just as Salty Pete put down the pipe and cleared his throat, resulting in cheers from the audience, the Heiress took a moment to scan over the clientele. There were men with fur-trimmed coats and sturdy boots, dangerous-looking women nonchalantly displaying scars and tattoos, a pair of masked individuals at the back and even an unlikely Rubbery Man, gurgling alone in the corner. All of them, the Heiress noticed, carried a gun, a knife, or both. And there was someone else, too, sitting at a table on the other side of the room. A silent figure dressed in a long coat, with a red scarf covering the better half of their face. For merely an instant, the Heiress was certain, her gaze had been met by the stranger’s own, hidden behind their green glass goggles. Even after looking away, she could still sense the figure staring at her out from the corner of their eyes. She tried to dismiss the feeling and focus instead on the story recounted by Salty Pete.

“Well, lads, I was in Traitor’s Wood – strange place as you know, all sorts of things crawling about. The Engineer had come and said that there was some fungus growing in a valve and that stopped the air from getting out. Now, even a skyfarer still in his mom’s cradle knows that if the steam don’t get out, it builds up inside the pipes, ‘til they explode. So, what was poor old me to do, eh? Well…” Here, Salty Pete stopped and drank deep from his pint, then, declaring himself satisfied, continued, “Well, I had to get out the train and clear the pipe, of course. The lads tied me to a rope and lowered me down the trap door, and I started dangling like mad out there, you know? And it was cold, you know how cold it’s out there, I could feel it even through the sky-suit. I could barely feel me hands, but I had to concentrate on the work! I had to fix the d__n pipe! So I steady myself and clamber across the hull, while the engineer was peering ‘is head out the trapdoor and shouting me instructions. But I didn’t need ‘em, didn’t need ‘em at all, because I soon spotted this big patch of yellow fungus covering a hole, ‘shrooms growing all over the place, and thought “This ought to be it.” But the b____rs was growing on the inside too, so I had to scrape it all clean and get that stick – I ‘ad a stick, I didn’t tell you – get that stick deep in the pipe to pick all the gooey bits out. And as I’m busy doing this, what do you think I hear?”

“What?”

“I hear this buzzing noise, friends. At first I thought it was the engine, the fungus ‘ad got to it or som’thing, so I yell back to the crew “Watch the fire, boys, is it going to pop?” but the engineer says ‘no’. So what the hell is it, then? And as I concentrate on the work, I realise it and yell “No one make a sound!””

The audience suddenly grew quiet, much like Salty Pete’s crew in the story. Smirking, the skyfarer continued his tale.

“Don’t you get it, eh? Chorister Bees! Big as a house and black as nightmares, they are! And they never come alone, oh no, sir! No, they always come in swarms. There must have been some ten, fifteen of them. And as they get closer, you realise that it’s not buzzing you hear, no, but real song in real human voices! That’s why they call them that. I don’t know how they do it, it gives me the creeps, folks! And they move awfully fast too! I think about twenty black monsters dashed past me on their way. I must say, I was scared they’d try to pollinate me, like a flower!” Someone in the crowd laughed, but was quickly shushed. “You laugh, but if you’d seen their stingers… You could easily impale a man on that thing! Lucky we were, because the bees flew on and ignored us. I finish the work, but what was I thinking, eh? Where there’s bees, there ‘as to be a hive, and where’s the hive, there’s also honey. I tell the driver, “Follow those bees!” and soon enough the train starts moving.”

“But you had gotten back inside, no?”

“No, no, I was still dangling from the cord in all sides, but this was too good a chance to pass up. And we do it, we follow ‘em all the way to their hives, which they make in the hollow trunks of trees three times their size. There were, I think, some thirty bees flying around. I tell the gunner to shoot ‘em, but he cries, there’s only one rocket left! Now, Chorister Bees, they talk with each other through song. I know you won’t believe me, but it’s true. So if you kill one in the swarm, and the others notice it’s stopped singing, they’re going to come after you very soon. But we wanted that honey, and we were going to get it! I yell again at the gunner, and he waits, and waits, and… Well, to cut the story short, folks, he shoots the rocket and – BOOM! – kills all of ‘em dead. All fifty bees, in one shot! It wasn’t luck, no, no, it was the talent of me boy, I tell you! And then, because I was still caught on that rope, I tell the boys to lower me into the hive and I come back with gourd after gourd of sweet, delicious honey! So if you’ve put honey in your tea this morning, you know who to thank for it!”

The audience started cheering after the end of the implausible story, save for one member, who wanted to know where had Salty Pete gotten those gourds from? Did he have them with him when he went out to fix the vent? If yes, then why?

“If I didn’t know you,” replied Pete, going back to his pipe, “I’d buy you a one trip ticket to Parliament without thinking twice! You’d fit right in with the lads there, I swear!”

While the rest of the people in attendance were laughing at the comment, the Heiress was still trying figure out what was real and what was not in the story. The number of bees was surely exaggerated, maybe their size too? They had Chorister Bee honey at home, in a small, neat jar in pantry, but she never guessed that it was gathered from huge tree trunks by bearded men perilously dangling from ropes. She slightly turned her head to the right to look again at the mysterious stranger from before, but they were now focused on Salty Pete, like everyone else. Perhaps she had just imagined them staring back.

“And that’s with the bees, folks! What do you want to hear next?”

“Monsters! Give us more sky beasts!” came several shouts from the audience, along with the clinking sound of coins.

“Sky beasts, eh? What’d you like then? A tale about the Cantankeries? beasties with rows upon rows of sharp teeth and a downright nasty attitude! Lost me pinkie to one of ‘em! Or those prickly b_stards, the Flukes?”

“What’s the fiercest beast you fought in the skies, Pete?” asked someone.

“The fiercest? I reckon it’s them Scrive-Spinsters! Met one once, and up close too, when I was hauling literature to New Winchester. They’re attracted to books and knowledge, smell it or sense it from far away. Their claws are made of the thickest bronzewood, and they can tear apart a locomotive as if it were a tin can. And you won’t believe me, but they’re made entirely of paper! Just pieces and pieces of paper flying through the sky, but don’t look too close at ‘em, cause they’re full of weird writings that will set your eyes on fire!”

“How do they fly if they’re made of paper?” intervened the same contrarian as before.

“Magic, or som’thing! How should I know how they do it? And, honestly, I don’t even care, long as they fly somewhere far away from me engine! I swear, we escaped that one by jettisoning a whole crate of books from the train. Tricked it into going after those and leaving us alone. But, yes, folks, I have to say: the Scrive-Spinster is the worst beast you’ll ever come upon in the skies!”

“What about Curators?”

It was the stranger with the red scarf who had spoken. Even muffled, the voice was clearly male, but it sounded somehow different from those of other skyfarers. It lacked the dry coarseness in Salty Pete’s tone.

“What about ‘em?” retorted Pete, visibly offended by the interruption.

“You claim that a Scrive-Spinster is worse than a Curator?”

“I claim you’re more likely to run into one, so in me book they’re more trouble. Who’s ever seen a Curator, anyways?”

“I have,” replied the man, “and I’m willing to tell you... for the usual price.”

The patrons turned to the man, some with amusement, others with unease, then looked at each other, as if trying to weigh the value of his words. No one dared speak, however, and no one approached his table. The way the man had pronounced the word sent a shiver down the Venturous Heiress’ spine, and she instinctively tucked her hands inside the pockets of her cloak. She had no idea what a ‘Curator’ was, but, judging by the reactions of the clients, it sounded terribly interesting. If only she had a coin on her – wait! At the bottom of the left pocket, something small and round and metallic…

“Well,” Salty Pete eventually broke the silence, “seems no one’s interested. Sorry, mate, what can I say -”

“I’d like to hear about the Curators, sir.” The Heiress stepped forward and placed one golden Sovereign on the table, before the man. “Please.” Eyeing the brave, young tipper with concealed interest, the stranger slowly picked up the coin and turned to the audience, whose previous apprehension had only slightly dissipated.

“We have a taker, after all. Curators! Where should I begin? Maybe with the sharp talons and the long fangs? Or with the membranous wings, whose span is as wide as the distance between me and Pete over there? Or, perhaps, with the huge ears, which allow them to hear even the softest of movements from miles away, in all directions? But no. I’m afraid all of these details will be of no use to you, friends, because the first thing that betrays a Curator’s presence is the sound. The terrifying shrieks they let out from the depths of their throats through their misshapen, slitted mouths. If you hear a Curator’s shriek once, you will wish to never hear it again. And if the Curator’s decided to cast you as its prey, you won’t even get the chance. But maybe I should give you a description, after all, if only because you won’t be able to see one coming after you – just a tall, black shadow lunging towards your locomotive. If you do somehow manage to get a closer look at the monster - perhaps while you’re floating aimlessly amid what’s left of your engine – you’ll notice that they have thick fur, which covers every single spot on their body, protecting them from the biting cold of the skies, except for their great wings. Those sprout from their shoulders and are so thin that you can see through them almost perfectly. But don’t be fooled! They’re strong enough to carry the Curators across miles and miles of wild emptiness without giving them the slightest inconvenience, and still allow them to move so fast that they can easily outspeed a Moloch-class Liner. Now, if you’re curious what’s my advice in case you ever come face to face with a Curator, I have just one word for you.” The man absent-mindedly flipped the gold coin and caught it in the palm of his glove, before looking up at the crowd, who had absorbed everything he had said. 

“Pray.”

For a while, the room stood silent and only the crackling of the fireplace was heard. At last, Salty Pete began clapping sardonically from his spot.

“Thank you, thank you, mate! Truly! But how, if you’ll allow me asking, do you know all these things, if those beasts are as deadly as you’ve described? I reckon it’d be hard to tell what they look like if no one’s lived to talk about ‘em.”

“I never said that no one has survived an encounter with a Curator,” answered the man calmly, “and I know what I know because I once killed one myself.”

Salty Pete broke out into a bout of laughter, yet he was the only one in the tavern to do so.

“I must say, mate, you’re a great storyteller, but a terrible liar. You were so serious, I almost believed you for a moment. Go ahead, then, tell us how you done it, though I’ll warn you this isn’t the penny-dreadful market!”

“ _That_ story is too long for now, I’m afraid. Maybe some other time, if our paths happen to cross again. But until then, I must bid you all a good evening!” Saying that, the man rose from his chair, pocketed the gold coin he had been fidgeting with and walked out the door. Several of those present took this as an opportunity to let out a sigh of relief.

“Yes, sure, go away!” shouted Pete long after the stranger had taken his leave, “Only proves he was liar, after all. Curators and whatnot! Now, folks, who wants to hear a _real_ sky-story?”

The room seemed to have gotten warmer after the man’s departure, and the mood lightened a bit. Soon enough, everyone appeared to have completely forgotten about the Curators and the mysterious stranger. Salty Pete resumed his usual shtick, and when he grew tired, other storytellers took his spot. They swapped tales of whistling stones and strange lights in the skies, of treacherous narrow passes and dreary patches of open skies, of the giant bloom of Titania, the mirror-gardens of Caduceus, the perils of Wells and the unassuming fools they sucked in. The Heiress was delighted by them all, yet every time she attempted to envision the wonders described, there came also a dark, prowling shadow darting across the sky. The description of the legendary beast had impressed her more than she was willing to recognise. Lodged deep within her awe-deprived imagination, the image of that unseen predator would appear to her again during long evenings at home or boring school-days, when time seemed to pass so slow (and sometimes truly did, as her aunt and uncle possessed, like all wealthy families, enough seasoned hours to influence the ebbing of time in their own household.)

Time! The Heiress checked her pocketwatch – the next train would arrive at Queen’s Cross Station in several minutes. She had to be there when the passengers got off if she wanted to cross the Span without arising any suspicions. She looked about the room, where a jolly atmosphere had now taken hold, after the captain of a locomotive had begun singing a sky-shanty and the rest of the clients had joined in. Truth be told, she much preferred this dirty tavern to her own spotless home, where the maids cleaned away any sign of liveliness together with the dust and the cobwebs.

Sighing, the Heiress walked out the door unnoticed. The sky outside had taken on a vibrant hue of violet, and, gazing up at it, the Heiress wondered if she would ever get the chance of leaving Port Prosper and seeing the High Wilderness for herself. Unbeknown to the girl, that question would soon find its answer.


	4. Chapter 4

The Heiress was certain she was being followed. She had spotted the two figures walking behind her some time ago, but she was not certain if they were really after her. She turned a corner and went around a small building block, coming out in the same place she had left from. She turned her head only slightly to look back and, sure enough, the two were also exiting the same street. And it seemed like they were gaining distance on her.

The first idea that came to her was to run into a side-alley, entering one of those labyrinths of short passages that always form behind buildings. The Heiress hoped she could lose them there, even though the two surely knew this part of town better than her. The footsteps were growing quicker behind her. Fear crept in, clouding her judgement, and the Heiress, by now running as fast as she could, started taking turns at random in a desperate attempt to lose her followers. But still it was in vain, as the footsteps were treading ever closer. Perhaps she could get back to the main street and make a run for the bridge. Perhaps someone would see her and intervene. She turned again and jumped over a leaking pipe. The walls of disaffected buildings and locked warehouses surrounded her, each as bland and mouldy as the others, forcing the Heiress to admit that she had got herself lost in the alleys of the East End. She went past one more corner and stopped.

A smiling labourer was winking at her from a large poster on the opposite wall, inviting others to seek work at the Windward Company’s factories. D_mn it! It was a dead end.

“Good evening, miss!” she heard a man’s voice say. The Heiress slowly turned around to face the pair: a man, of the sort you wouldn’t wish to bump into at night on a street with no gas lamps, and a grinning woman. She had seen her, the Heiress remembered, at a table in the pub. She must have drawn too much attention to herself when she had given that stranger a Sovereign. What a foolish mistake! The woman probably thought the girl had more coins on her, and took a friend with her on what seemed a straightforward job.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, the Heiress tried to reply,

“I- I am just trying to get home.”

“Home? Then you’ve taken the long way around, miss. And what’s one like you doing in the East End, anyways? You should know, it’s very dangerous around these parts…”

The Heiress spotted the flash of the knife and froze in place. Even if she could run, it would be of no use, as the two ruffians were completely blocking the path.

“I have no money on me!”

“We’ll see about that,” said the man, making a gesture towards his companion. The woman stepped forward and a veered her hands inside each pocket on the girl’s cloak.

“No money, but there’s a Jack,” she said, taking out the Heiress’ pocketwatch. They could have that one for all the girl cared. You could buy dozens of them for pennies anywhere in the Empire.

“We can christen it later. But anything else? Anything... shiny?” The woman took a look at her and shook her head. “Rings? Bracelets? Necklaces?” the man asked again. The Heiress’s right hand instinctively reached for the object around her neck, but she stopped herself. The necklace was safely tucked under her petticoat and she would only draw attention to it.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” the woman replied, after taking off the Heiress’ hood and inspecting her hands.

“Miss, I’m getting disappointed here…. and you won’t like me when I’m disappointed!” the thief added in a tone he must have been very proud of.

“Wait a moment…” The woman had circled behind the girl and was peering insistently at her neck. In one swift move, she picked up the piece of golden thread that was poking out and lifted the necklace over the Heiress’ head. She felt a desperate need to scream as she saw it tossed through the air towards the man.

“Nice find. It’s gold, alright. And what’s these squiggly lines supposed to be?” he asked, turning the object over in his hand. The Heiress was too angry to reply, but in fact she didn’t know either. The front of the locket was engraved with a sort of spiralling pattern, surrounding an irregular set of ellipses with a circle in the center. The Heiress had long puzzled over what the image was supposed to depict, but it looked so alien, no matter what angle she tried to approach it from, that she eventually had given up on it.

Now it was dangling before the criminal’s eyes. Without hesitation, the man opened the locket and whistled. “There’s a picture of a lass in here!” He glanced at the Heiress. “Isn’t this one, though she looks almost the same. Maybe a bit older. No, I’m sure it’s not her. You have an older sister, miss?”

The Heiress did not answer.

“Anyways, it can fetch a nice price somewhere. I’d say, we could let you go now, but I don’t want you telling us to the coppers.”

“I won’t! I promise. Just – let me go, please!”

“See, miss, I’d be ready to trust such a young lady anytime, but after you hid this thing from us, I’m not so sure. Maybe you ought to be taught a quick lesson about liars, and what happens to them, right?”

The man brandished his knife and smirked at the girl. The Heiress felt two tears rolling down her cheeks, though she was trying her best not to cry. All this had been such a stupid idea! It was her fault for getting into this mess, and now…

“Am I interrupting anything here?”

The Heiress recognised the voice and immediately spotted the man approaching them. It was the stranger from before, the one she had paid to talk about Curators!

“Listen, mate, we were just minding our business here. And I suggest you mind yours, if you don’t want trouble.” The male ruffian turned around, pointing his weapon straight at the newcomer, but the man didn’t even appear to flinch.

“Then I’ll be quick: I just wanted to ask how you managed to crawl this far from the nearest slimy pond.”

Was he trying to get himself killed? The robber stared at him in disbelief, then frowned.

“Listen, do you think I’m stupid, or something?”

“No, of course not. I _know_ you are.”

“This one has a wish! Alright, smart g_t, you asked for it!”

The man took a strike at the intruder, but stopped suddenly. The Heiress couldn’t see what was happening clearly, but the stranger’s right hand had gripped the attacker’s wrist, stopping the knife in mid-air. For a moment, surprise came over the rogue and he lost focus. That was all the man needed: his other hand grabbed the villain’s shoulder and spun him around, twisting his arm behind his back in what was, undoubtedly, a painful position, forcing him to drop his knife. For the Heiress, everything had happened almost instantly. Having disarmed him, the stranger pushed the man over, leaving him to grunt and swear, and picked up the knife. The other criminal had watched the scene play out before her in utter astonishment, but now became suddenly aware of the fact that the man’s attention had shifted onto her. Given little time to think, the best plan she could come up with was to yell, “You! Stay back, or… or else…” but she couldn’t finish the phrase, because the knife flew past, mere inches from her ear, and stuck itself right in the left eye of the worker on the poster. The woman then decided to follow her second plan, which was to run screaming past the skyfarer, who did not even bother to stop her. Her companion, who had got up in the meantime, followed quickly behind.

“Everything’s alright now, miss. I hope those two didn’t hurt you,” the man said through the red scarf.

“I- Thank you!” the Heiress answered, wiping her tears. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if you weren’t here. Speaking of, how did you find me?”

“Pardon me, but you don’t look exactly like a skyfarer, you know? Didn’t you see how they all looked at you when you pulled out that Sovereign? Since I was the one to get you into the mess, I thought I should hang around in case anything tried anything. It seems I was right to do so.”

“Yes, you were, sir. Thank you again for… well, you know, for saving me.”

“All in a day’s work, miss.”

“Is there any way I might repay you?”

“Please don’t bother. Unless, do you happen to know which way from here is New Winchester?”

The Heiress shook her head. New Winchester – that was the gathering place of the Tacketies!

“No. But my family is rich. Maybe -”

“Go around saying that and you’ll get yourself in more trouble. I think the less your family knows of this, the better. They don’t know you’re here, am I right?” The Heiress nodded. “Just as I thought. You’d better go home now. Speaking of, I think this is yours…” The man picked up the locket from where the criminal had dropped it, and stood still. The Heiress couldn’t see the expression on his face, but she could tell something was not right.

“Where do you have this from?” he asked.

“It’s mine. It’s an inheritance.”

“Liar.”

“What? I’m not… I have it from my mother, it belonged to her!”

“Your mother…?”

The man looked at the Heiress, then down at the photo inside the locket, then up at the Heiress again.

“Could you give it back, sir? Sir?”

Without answering, the man stepped back, turned and began sprinting.

“Hey!” the girl shouted behind, running after him. What was this all about? Had he saved her from the robbers so he could rob her himself? She followed the man as he moved from alley to alley, trying to lose her just as she had tried with the thieves, but his red scarf was easy to spot and the Heiress managed to stay on track. Soon enough, she was back on the main street, and the man had already crossed to the other side. The Heiress barely got to move before the man saw her and began climbing on a chain link fence nearby. From there, he jumped on a window ledge, then proceeded to lift himself onto the roof with the help of a rusty drain pipe. By the time the Venturous Heiress had reached the fence, he was already running across the rooves of the East End.

“Well, b_gger _that_ ”, she thought to herself. She couldn’t follow him on the roof, yet the man still had her necklace. How was she going to find the skyfarer now? Wait! That was it! He was a skyfarer, and all skyfarers return to their locomotives sooner or later. In Port Prosper, that meant he was heading for Queen’s Cross station.

Smiling, the Heiress pulled the hood back over her head and began running west.

* * *

“Something needs to be done,” the Chairman thought, watching the dreadnaught pull into station, “only I don’t know exactly what.”

Everyone had seen it come through the relay. It was quite difficult to miss the arrival of a ship, in fact, as Singh-Jenkins Relays were terribly noisy when they activated (This was one of the reasons the Albion transit relay had been built so far away from town, and at a higher altitude, too. The gigantic vegetation around it managed to obscure most, but not all, of its clanking noises.) The Chairman had watched it slowly make its way towards the city, and the pit in his stomach seemed to only grow deeper and deeper with each passing second. The muttering coming from the crowd behind him abruptly ended as the wheels of the locomotive screeched to a halt on the platform. For a brief moment, everyone was silent, watching the great metal beast adorned with the symbols of the Crown release gusts of hot air from its vents and pipes. Everything in its vicinity suddenly became tiny and unimportant.

The doors of the locomotive slid open and, at the Chairman’s signal, the band started playing a triumphal march. 

Only three people stepped out of the dreadnaught. The first two were soldiers, and their bright navy-blue uniforms easily put to shame all of their colleagues in Port Prosper. The third was more phantom than man. Pale skin, white hair and an impeccable white uniform. They would have felt at home in the pages of any tale featuring vampirism, and the Parsimonious Chairman was half-expecting to see a pair of tiny fangs when the figure opened their mouth. Yet the face of the Prudent Secretary was devoid of even the tiniest grimace; only their eyes, slowly panning from left to right behind their circular glasses, were proof that there was indeed some fragment of vitality somewhere, deep, deep inside them. Their gaze moved over the blurry faces in the crowd, focusing instead on the decorations strewn about, on the members of the marching band, causing one of the trumpetists to choke on his instrument, and finally rested on the figure of the Parsimonious Chairman, who was bravely, or perhaps foolishly, striding forwards.

The Chairman himself wasn’t sure what he expected from the Secretary. A salute, preferably, even a slight nod would have been enough, but not this crushing silence. The Chairman tried to look back into the Secretary’s eyes, but he might have as well tried to gaze into the eyes of a polar bear while dressed as a seal. The band had finished their song by now, and, in the awkward pause that followed, everyone was forced to watch the bizarre staring contest between the slender, white figure near the train and the plump man in front of it. “Well, this gets us nowhere,” the Chairman thought, and turned around to begin his speech. This, he soon realised, was a grave mistake.

“Citizens of Port Prosper,” he shouted, although the audience could hear him clear enough already, “today is a day of great importance. Today is… today is…” Something was terribly, horrendously wrong in the universe, and the Chairman could sense it. A shiver went down his spine and he became aware of the Secretary’s gaze, fixed firmly on the back of his neck. His hands started shaking, his lips trembled. It felt as if every passing second was cut from the fabric of time by a guillotine. Still undeterred, the Chairman attempted to carry on,

“Today is… is.. a big day. Yes! We… we… the Windward Company… we… and the Crown! Her Majesty! As Her Majesty’s subjects, we… today… we are proud that, that… the Empire – we are! We are the Empire, and… and… yes, as I was saying…” It was all coming out wrong, as wrong as humanly possible. In his mind, the Chairman fumbled through the lengthy paragraphs of the speech he had prepared the day before – they all sounded pathetic and amateurish right now. Desperate, he dug deeper through his memory, trying to find something, anything, he could salvage. Here was something,

“The hour trade! The hour trade began when the first prospectors came to the Reach in the year of our Lord...” No, no, no! Just skip to the end! Skip to the end and be done with this already. The Chairman was ready to jump off the platform, if it meant escaping the burning gaze at his back. He tried to wrap up somehow the disjointed mess his mouth had spouted out,

“And… yes, we are honoured to receive today, in our modest town, the Prudent Secretary of the Windward Company! May the future only bring more prosperity to Port Prosper! Hail Britannia, and long live Her Majesty, the Queen!”

At last, his efforts spent, he felt the terrible gaze move away, now cautiously scrutinising the assembly of Stovepipes before them. Some of those in attendance had chuckled during the Chairman’s trainwreck of a speech, but as the Secretary’s gaze fell upon them, every one of them experienced a sudden urge to bury themselves deep in the ground and never come back up again. It wasn’t difficult to guess whether the Secretary was satisfied or not with all they had just observed, but their facial features betrayed nothing. Finally, raising one arm, they spoke,

“Hail Britannia!” 

That was all. They immediately started walking forwards, as the band hurriedly began playing an off-key rendition of the first measures in “God Save the Queen”. As if acted upon by a force of nature, the crowd immediately split up in two separate groups, allowing the Prudent Secretary and the two soldiers unperturbed passage between them.

“And they have to deal with _that_ in London? All the time?” The Parsimonious Chairman took out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat on his forehead. For a short while, his senses had shut off and a wave of relief washed over him. But it went just as quickly as it had come, and the Chairman suddenly realised that he was supposed to accompany the Secretary into Port Prosper. Not that they needed any accompaniment at all, but he needed to maintain the appearances. If he wasn’t near them, the people would have thought, rightfully, that he was afraid of the Prudent Secretary. The Chairman thus began running after them in as elegant a manner as he could manage, elbowing his way through the crowd that had reformed itself, all of its members now experiencing the same temporary sense of relief and unaware of their immediate surroundings.

The Chairman managed to catch up with the Secretary eventually, panting heavily, and only then did it dawn on him that he didn’t know what he should say.

“What was _that_ , Chairman?” asked the Secretary without stopping or turning their head around. The Chairman thought for a moment that they were referring to his speech, but the tone of the question suggested something else.

“It was, umm, a humble token of our esteem towards the –”

“Silence!”

Something in the Secretary’s voice made the Chairman stop in his track and stand at attention, curtly replying “Yes, Sir! I mean, er- Mad-umm… errr.. mhmm…”

“Secretary will do, Chairman.”

“Secretary! Secretary!” an intrepid reporter shouted, running towards them, “A photo for the New Gazette, please?”

Mechanically, the Chairman produced a joyous grin and shook the Secretary’s hand before the reporter’s camera flash. He would have rather touched a block of solid ice.

“Let me ask you, Chairman,” the Secretary said after the reporter had departed, “what do you believe is the essence to the Windward Company’s operations?”

“The hour trade, which began when the first prospectors came to the Reach in the year of our Lord - ”

“No,” the Secretary cut him off. “It is subtlety, and I find that there is a great lack of it here. Do you think the Tacketies have no spies in Port Prosper? I am afraid they do; in fact, I have an entire list of them. The only way you could have made it more obvious that I would arrive here was if you had written “PRUDENT SECRETARY COMING TODAY” in fireworks all across the sky.”

The Chairman tried to intervene, but failed to find any appropriate response. In his mind, however, the thought had already taken shape: “And what if they know, eh? It’ll be easier to get rid of _you_ , then.” Of course, he didn’t say it out loud, and the Secretary continued,

“From what I have seen thus far, I must say that I am dissatisfied with the current state of this city. I believe several changes are in order, and urgently.”

“But, Secretary, you have only seen a small fraction of Port Prosper! We might have encountered a few mishaps during our welcoming ceremony, it’s true, but I assure you, I have everything here under control!”

Right then, a shout came from the other side of the station: “Stop that man! Thief!”

The Parsimonious Chairman became determined to find God in that moment, if only to ask why life always insisted on making fun of him.


	5. Chapter 5

The Venturous Heiress managed to reach the station without any other incidents. She ran inside, dashing past the yawning hawker outside trying to sell a dubious assortment of patriotic souvenirs depicting a smudgy Queen Victoria against the Union Jack. The Heiress looked up at the station’s master clock, which hang, heavy and ornate, from a tall beam in the ceiling; its slimmest hand ticked once, twice, stopped momentarily on the twelve, determined a functionary to shout “15:23 from London arriving now on platform B” to no one in particular, and then kept ticking on. Time was running out, the Heiress knew. Queen’s Cross Station was already full of people, but every moment now, a new influx of travellers from the capital would come in, rendering the chance of finding the stranger close to zero. Short of breath, the Heiress stopped and took a look around, while simultaneously tugging at her petticoat, which had certainly not been designed to accommodate long-distance runners.

There were just too many faces in the crowd! The Heiress tried to concentrate and see if she could spot the man’s red scarf. Song reached her from the station’s main platform, and she began walking forwards, wandering about in the fashion of those with no idea of where they should be going. A couple of skyfarers were talking beneath an archway; a station clerk was busy giving explanations to an annoyed lady (“Yes, I know, but platform A was requested by the Windward Company today, and we moved the train to one that was available”), who then stormed away in a hurry; a family of four went by cheerfully, holding flyers for the sea-side along their tickets. More passengers were walking to and fro, but no one was wearing anything red. Had she missed him? the Heiress wandered. Was she too late? The glass doors to platform B opened. The Heiress was ready to give up and – there! There he was, unmistakable, at the other end of the station!

The Heiress hurried and pushed her way through the emerging crowd, nearing the skyfarer. He was walking towards the door leading to the lower platforms, which were reserved for independent locomotives who did not abide by any particular timetable. Through the noise and rush of movement in the station, the man did not appear to have noticed the girl who was now walking right behind him. The Heiress had not really thought her plan this far ahead and, in an attempt at discretion, grasped the stranger’s arm. He stopped and turned round, looking at the Heiress with what she guessed was annoyed bewilderment.

“How did you…?”

“You’re a skyfarer, it wasn’t that hard. Now give it back,” she demanded.

The man tried to pull away, but the Heiress tightened her grasp.

“Little devil! Alright, I have it here,” the man said as his free hand went inside his jacket. Only, the thing he pulled out was not a necklace. It was metallic, with a wooden grip, and pointed directly at the Heiress. The girl froze and let go of the man’s arm. Without saying another word, the skyfarer put the gun back in its place and walked on as if nothing had happened. 

No! She couldn’t let him get away again! In lack of other options, the Heiress did what upper-class ladies were educated since childhood to do in such moments. With her voice raised to a pitch and index finger raised accusingly, she shouted “Stop that man! Thief!” The man’s walk instantly turned to a sprint, and the Heiress gave chase after him, followed, some distance behind, by three constables who had finally caught on to what was happening and were struggling not to lose the two from sight. The door led to spiral case, on which the man was now descending two steps at the time, while the Heiress desperately tried to keep the pace. About two levels above, the constables were making their way down too, in a more or less orderly fashion. One of them stopped a couple of times, trying to point his gun at the criminal below, but the architecture kept blocking his aim.

At last – the Heiress saw the man enter a door (the plaque next to it said “Level 15”) and followed him through, down a narrow corridor, past a gate in a metal fence and then… The Heiress stopped. She saw the man in front of her, running towards a giant locomotive roughly four times her height. This was the closest she had ever been to one. They were just so much bigger up close! The Heiress stared at the metalwork monster, at its many pipes and fuming chimney, at the stained-glass windows… and, remembering herself, at the sliding door beginning closing after the thief. She heard the constables’ footsteps echo from behind her and knew they wouldn’t make it in time. She had to act now. Her heart knew what she had to do, but her mind was not sure if she should do it.

Somewhere above, the station’s master clock ticked once.

With all the strength she had left, the Heiress jumped onto the platform and made a desperate run for the locomotive, plunging forward just as the heavy door slid close. She felt her knees scrape against metal, and tried to pick herself up from where she had landed on the floor. The worker manning the door looked at the girl with shock.

“Captain!” he cried.

“Not now!” came a voice, followed by “Start the engines, lads! All pressure to the boilers!”

“Uh, captain…”

“Close the hatches and secure all trap doors! We’re making a hasty leave!”

“Captain!”

“What is it, man?” asked the skyfarer with the red scarf, now standing in the frame of the door on the opposite wall. Before the crewman could answer, he had already spotted the Heiress, who had managed to rise back to her feet in the meantime. “Are you bl__dy kidding me? You! You’re getting off my train this very - !” His sentence was cut short, however, by the sound of the three constables outside trying to force open the lock on the ship’s door.

The captain let out a short, but truly sacrilegious curse, then shouted,

“Driver, we need to get out of here!”

“Working on it, captain,” replied a young man wearing a leather hat, running past.

“Right then, I’ll deal with you later. For now, stay out of our way. And if I were you, I’d get away from the airlock,” the captain told the Heiress, running back whence he came. The girl followed the crewman out of the cramped room and into a larger hallway. A couple of other crewmembers ran past, giving her curious looks, but remained focused on their tasks. 

For the Heiress, Everything was happening too quickly. The day had started just like any other; at no point had she planned to get aboard a locomotive. Was she to blame for going to the East End in the first place? As her aunt always said, if only she’d known her place –

“Boilers ready!”

Suddenly, the locomotive was jerked forward, and inertia thrusted the unassuming girl back into the wall. She tried her best to keep her balance, but something was different. The train’s great wheels had been spun into motion, slow at first, then accelerating faster and faster. The Heiress moved to the nearest window and peeked outside. In a flash, she saw the three constables running away from the platform, then the tracks speeding alongside the locomotive, and then… nothing. Below them, there was only a straight fall all the way down to the roots of the heavens.

“We’re flying,” thought the Heiress. “ _ I _ ’m flying!” There it was, the same sensation she had experienced before – the beating of her heart, the dryness in her throat. Fear? Excitement? Both.

She kept staring out the window for a while, watching as the locomotive gained altitude and rose above the rooves of Port Prosper, leaving them behind. The city and its streets appeared so tiny now, almost like a model replica of the actual city. Somewhere, among those twisting passageways, her aunt and uncle went about their day, unaware of everything their niece was going through. “They’re going to be so mad when they found out,” she thought to herself, “but I don’t care! An actual locomotive! This will wipe the smile from the faces of those snobs at school! I can’t wait to tell them about it when I… get back home.”

The captain passed behind her and told her to follow him. They walked to the end of the corridor and into a medium-sized room, with what the Heiress guessed to be a windshield on the opposite wall. The young man (or, now that the Heiress could get a better look, woman?) was sitting in a chair in the middle, operating a diversity of levers and handles with apparent ease. The captain walked up to a porthole and looked outside, but the Heiress chose to remain near the door.

“What happened this time, captain? I thought you were trying to get directions to New Winchester?” Despite her best efforts, the Heiress could not tell if the driver’s remark was meant to be sarcastic or not.

“Yes, yes, I was, and then… something intervened,” the captain said, looking pointedly at the girl.

“Ah, I see you made a friend along the way. Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to give out -”

“They call me the Incautious Driver,” they said, before the captain could get a chance to protest. “You?”

“The… the Venturous Heiress.”

“Splendid name!” the Driver commented, taking his eyes almost completely away from the windshield. “So, how’d you two met?”

“Well…”

The sound of an impact came, and the ship started shaking. The Driver was frantically spinning the wheel, trying to get the locomotive back under control.

“Did I hit something again?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, then they must be shooting at us.”

“I’m sorry,” intervened the Heiress, “but  _ who _ is shooting at us?”

The captain pulled down an instrument akin to a periscope and, looking through, gave the verdict, “Three Coursers. The Stovepipes won’t let us get away easy.” Then, to the Driver, “Can you lose them?”

“We’re in open air, captain. No chance.”

“Fine, I’ll go tell the gunners. Meanwhile, you get us out of here.”

“Understood, captain,” replied the Driver, pulling the goggles over their eyes and stretching out their arms.

“Wait,” the Heiress asked just as the captain was leaving, “I want to help. What should I do?”

“ _ You _ stay put and don’t touch anything, understood?” Another blast shook the vessel and the captain hurried down the corridor.

Unlike their massive cousins, the dreadnaughts, Coursers are small, light-armoured locomotives, often employed for two things: patrolling around ports and hunting down other targets. For this reason, their guns are mounted at the front, beneath the driver’s cabin, allowing for maximum accuracy. Such guns were now aimed at the larger Bedivere-class ship below, firing endlessly upon it (with brief pauses between bouts, allowing the heat produced to dissipate.) Its own cannons were now rotating into position, trying to counter the three ships’ relentless attack.

“Would you mind ( _ boom _ ) manning the periscope, miss?” asked the Driver.

“But the captain said…”

“I know, but it would be of ( _ boom _ ) great help in dodging these ( _ boom _ ) projectiles.”

The Heiress neared the instrument and positioned it before her eyes. Three small ships, with the symbol of the Crown painted in blue on their hulls, were rapidly approaching them from behind.

“There’s one from the right… Two from the left… Now they’re coming from behind… Another one from the right…” The Driver pulled a series of levers, thrusting the locomotive one way, then another, and managing to avoid most, if not all of the projectiles. With the locomotive now in a somewhat stabler position, the gunners were able to hold their own against the enemy ships. The Heiress yelped as one well-placed shot ruptured the thin hull of a Stovepipe locomotive, turning it into a mass of steel drifting pathetically through the skies. A few moments later, another Courser was metaphorically going down.

“There’s still one on our tracks, but it keeps dodging all the shots.”

“I might have an idea on how to get rid of it,” the Driver replied, “but it requires full throttle. The captain never allows me to go at full speed.”

“I’m… ( _ boom _ ) I’m sure he won’t mind it, this one time.”

Giggling, the Incautious Driver pushed a black lever forward all the way and yelled, “Full steam ahead! I always wanted to say that, you know?” The Heiress, however, didn’t hear them, as she was busy with being utterly terrified. Whatever the Driver’s plan was, it seemed to entail driving head first into a stone wall. Instinct determined the girl to hold tight to something and close her eyes, almost ready to regret every step of the way that had brought her here.

Just as the locomotive was approaching a certainly fatal collision, the Driver gripped a large handle and pushed it up with all their might. In the span of a few seconds, the Heiress could feel the locomotive tilting upwards at more and more precarious angles, until it was – the Heiress fell on her back and landed on the cabin’s closed door – fully vertical! The vessel was flying upwards along the wall! 

The Courser, however, did not have the same fortune, and, following the impact, was unlikely to fly ever again.

With one hand extended painfully from the seat they had been pushed into, the Incautious Driver lowered the speed and finally let go of the handle that controlled the ship’s inclination. Slowly, things went back to normal. Panting heavily and heartbeat at almost critical levels, the Heiress managed to move away from the door before the captain barged in.

“You went full throttle! You know… you’re not supposed to…”

“The young lady assured me that it was alright.”

“Did she, now?”

“Well, we did get rid of the Coursers, so…” The Heiress was interrupted by the groans of crewmembers coming along to learn what the bl__dy hell had just happened.

“We need privacy. You two, my cabin, now!”

The captain’s cabin was, in the Heiress’ opinion, pretty modest. There was a bed (on the edge of which she was now sitting), a chair (occupied by the captain, his face still covered), an desk between them, a small wardrobe, which was supposed to contain the clothes thrown haphazardly on the floor, and a trunk with, presumably, the captain’s other possessions. For a while, they sat in silence, as the captain regarded her with uncertain interest. The Driver had occupied themself by chewing on an apple and admiring the landscape outside. At last, the captain produced the necklace from the folds of his jacket and opened it.

“Driver, what do you think of this?”

“Hmmm… Yes, I think…” they said, scratching their chin, after studying the object for a couple of minutes, “That is definitely a woman!”

“What? No, I mean… the resemblance! Does  _ she _ look like  _ her _ ?”

“Now, that’s a difficult question.”

“Look, miss, we figured you out. Let’s spare the trouble and…”

“Now that you mentioned it, however,” the Driver went on, “they do look rather similar. If the girl was a few years older, maybe, they’d be mirror images of each other.”

“Yes, well, it’s just a photo! It doesn’t prove anything!”

The captain stopped for a moment, busy with his own thoughts.

“Alright, alright, I got it! What is your name, miss?”

Reluctantly, the Heiress answered, “They call me the Ventu-”

“Your  _ real _ name, I meant.”

“Olivia. Olivia Hawthorne.”

The captain’s head rose, and he put down the necklace.

“Well?” asked the Driver.

“It… Do you know how many ‘Olivia Hawthornes’ are in the High Wilderness? Throw a rock in London and you’ll hit five! Ten!”

“And all of them have the same necklace on their person?” enquired the Heiress, attracting the captain’s glare. For a while, they were all silent again, save for the Driver’s bites into the apple. After finishing it, it was them who spoke first.

“So… what are we going to do with her now?”

“I was thinking,” replied the captain, “of dropping her at the next port. You know, the usual.”

“Ah…”

“You have a better idea?”

“How about Polmear and Plenty’s?”

“The Inconceivable Circus?”

“Yes! She could jump the trapeze, or whatever, and earn money for a ticket back home. And it’s plausible, after all. All children run away with the circus at some point.”

“No, Driver, that was just you. Maybe Titania is closer. They have flowers and other girly stuff there, so-”

“Will you please stop talking about me as if I’m not right here?”

The two ceased and looked at the Heiress.

“Thank you. Now,” she continued, “can I have a saying in what’s going to happen to me?”

“And, miss, what do you propose?”

The Heiress would have said “Turn the ship around and drop me at Port Prosper”, but she reckoned that their welcome would be of the ‘Shoot first, questions later!’ variety.

“I thought so,” continued the captain, after a few quiet moments.

“Can I at least have some answers about… about all this?”

“You’re on my train now, miss, and I’m the one asking questions here.”

“Well… Well, you’re also the one who robbed me, threatened me with a gun, and considered just leaving me at some random port after  _ I _ helped save your engine from being charcoaled. Maybe answering some questions is sufficient payback?”

“She has a point,” intervened the Driver.

“What? Don’t encourage her! I- Fine, miss!” the captain gave in. “What is it that you wish to know?”

The Heiress pondered the question for a moment.

“You asked me my name. What’s yours?”

“Elliot Foster.”

“Oh. Then… can I see your face, please?”

“Yes.” The captain did not make any move. “I said you  _ can _ , I didn’t say I will show it to you.”

“But…! Fine. You look silly in those things, anyways. The green glass goggles make you look like you have bug’s eyes.”

“For your knowledge, miss, it’s not  _ green glass _ , it’s  _ neathglass _ , and of the finest sort. You won’t find another pair like these in the heavens, and I wear them because they are absolutely essential to my work…”

“And do you need them right now?”

Though grumbling, the captain conceded, and took off his scarf and goggles. The Heiress wasn’t sure what she expected him to look like. She had seen skyfarers with scars across their faces, missing eyes or other acquired deformities, but the man before her looked perfectly normal. She saw now that he was much older than she had thought; thirty, maybe almost forty years old, going by his grizzled hair and moustache. Yet there was still something odd about him.

“Here you go! Now, anything else?”

The eyes! They were grey too, Olivia realised, but a strange shade of grey. As if there had once been colour within them, but it had all been drained away.

“Just one more question: why did you steal my necklace?”

“Because… because…” The man’s right hand brushed through his hair. “Because I recognised the picture. No; because I recognised the object.”

“You mean…?”

“This necklace… I once knew the one to whom it belonged. Her name was Alice Hawthorne.”

The Heiress’ face grew pale.

“You knew my mother?”

“I was a close friend of hers, actually. She used to wear this necklace wherever she went.”

Olivia looked at the man in disbelief, which soon turned to anger.

“But I told you that! I told you that my mother had given it to me! Why did you steal it, then? It makes no sense! You had just met your old friend’s daughter, and…”

“Because the Alice Hawthorne I knew had no daughter, that’s why!” They were all silent again.

“But… I’m here.”

“I know, I see, and that’s what I couldn’t believe. That’s why I thought you were lying to me. I didn’t… I had no idea at all. I’m sorry for causing you all this trouble, miss. Pardon – Olivia.”

Elliot stood up from his desk and handed her the necklace. The photo inside now seemed impossibly old and distant.

“What was she like? My mother, I mean.” The captain gave her an inquisitive look. “She died when I was just a baby. This is all I have left from her.”

“Alice is dead?” The captain sat back down and drew his breath in. “She’s dead, then. How old are you again, Olivia?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen… It must have happened short after the exodus, then. I’m sorry, I… we had lost touch back then. All my memories of her are from Old London, I’m afraid.”

“I understand. It’s more than I have, anyways. My aunt and uncle never speak about her in the house.”

The captain took a deep look at her, as if still trying to discern if she was telling the truth or not.

“I think I know why that might be. Olivia, your mother was an only child.”

The Heiress couldn’t describe exactly what she felt in that moment. She had known all along, somewhere deep inside, that she was not like her guardians, that she did not stem from the same root as them, but hearing it out loud was still frightening. Her head swirled with questions. Her life, her family, her home – had it all been a lie? A lie construed by whom?

“I think all this is a lot to take in for you. Scrap what I said previously. We’ll take you back to Port Prosper and -”

“No.” Olivia raised her stare. “I don’t want to go back there. I want to know the truth. About my mother, about me.”

“I understand, but we really can’t keep you with us. A young lady…”, the captain began, not sure where he was going with the idea. A young lady what?

“What if I join your crew?” the Heiress volunteered.

“No.”

“Why? My mother...”

“Because you are a seventeen-year-old girl who spent all of her life among the upper class.”

“Yes, well… I also sneaked out to listen to skyfarers’ stories. I know a lot about the High Wilderness!”

“Then you should know not to trust everything a skyfarer says. I’m sorry, but no. I can give you a room on the ship, for now, but that’s all.”

In other circumstances, the Heiress would’ve insisted with her pleas, but the captain’s tone made it obvious that he was not about to change his mind. She stood up and walked to the cabin door.

“Let me help you with that,” that captain said, opening the door so violently that it nearly bruised the nose of one the crew members gathered on the other side. Elliot grinned.

“Alright, lads, listen. This lady stays with us for now, and if any one of you as much as touches her with one finger, well, you’ll have to go fish that finger out of Old Tom’s Well. Understood?” The crew all nodded together. “Excellent. Now, follow me, miss.”

The cabin they reserved for her was somewhat more spacious than the captain’s (“Used to be a storage room once” the Driver had told her), with one bunk bed tucked in the far corner and pretty much nothing else, save for one porthole next to it. After being left alone, the Heiress took off her cloak and tried to make herself comfortable. The pillow was hard and the covers were very thin, but she was far too tired to care anymore. In one day, her life had been completely turned upside-down. Was this sort of thing common in adulthood? She took out her necklace one more time and stared at the photograph of her mother. She looked just as radiant and warm as always. 

“It’s not the end,” the Heiress thought, “it’s just a new beginning.”

The locomotive was moving again, and Olivia could hear the winds of the High Wilderness beating against the window. It was a noisy, chaotic, yet wonderful sound. A new one, too. Tired though she was, the Heiress wished she could stay up all night and listen to it; five minutes later, she was already sound asleep.


End file.
